


Make The Rules Up (As I Go)

by Raisintorte



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raisintorte/pseuds/Raisintorte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only things in Henry’s life that weren’t disposable were Abigail and Abe, and with Abigail gone, Abe was all that mattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make The Rules Up (As I Go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaeveBran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeveBran/gifts).



Henry learned over the years not to become too attached to things. When there was sometimes only a matter of minutes to pack up and leave before the pitchfork-wielding mob made it to your front door, you learned quickly which objects mattered and which did not. Anything could be left behind and nothing was sacred. After all these years, Henry only had a few objects he would miss if he was forced to leave them - his tools, the medical bag, his journals, but in the end, even these were all ultimately disposable. 

But people were another matter, entirely. The only things in his life that weren’t disposable were Abigail and Abe, and with Abigail gone, Abe was all that mattered. 

Henry’s immortal life hadn’t always been so portable. The early years, after he finally got out of Bedlam, he moved to the continent. He had first tried going back to Nora but she would not give him a moment. She barred him from their house and even though he was her husband and legally both she and their home belonged to him, the entire neighborhood rallied to her side. They saw him simply as Nora’s mad husband. He tried going to London, but the rumors were pervasive. Worse than the shuttered doors and turned heads of his former friends were the groups he secretly dubbed the mad scientists - those people who wanted to test the limits of his immortality. After the third attempt on his life, he packed up his few belongings and the little money Nora had given him and headed for Paris. 

It was easy for him to get lost in Paris and he quickly became comfortable working as a doctor in a hospital in a less-than-fashionable part of town. Even then, he didn’t think to have a bag packed and ready to go on a moment’s notice, or to keep cash tucked away for easy access, or that he would need to react quickly when someone finally noticed he wasn’t aging. He was honestly shocked the first time it all went bad - six years after his life began again. A doctor he had known in his previous life visited the hospital and turned white at the sight of him. Henry made a mess of a hastily conjured explanation, claimed to be his own bastard son, but the doctor had heard rumors of his alleged immorality. He thought he'd managed to persuade the older man, but when he left work that night he got cornered by a group of men in a dark alley outside the hospital. The mob didn’t have pitch forks but they did have wooden boards and fists. 

Henry could remember all of the times he had died, but that memory always stood out. It was the first time he had seen betrayal and fear in the eyes of his killers. These had been his friends, his co-workers. And yet they murdered him in cold blood, truly thinking he had betrayed them. That he deserved to die. That he was someone to fear. When he awoke in the Seine, naked and sputtering, he made his way back to his flat, but it had already been ransacked so he stole a few items of clothing (his first thefts) and some food and made his way out of Paris. 

After that he had always made sure to have some clothing and money stored away and the moves got easier and easier. He learned to spot the the signs when people were starting to get suspicious. He knew if an old colleague or friend or former co-worker who knew him to be dead or a different age saw him, it was time to go. He stopped waiting for the axe to fall and started making his own moves. He got very good at not making any attachments, being distant and private, and disappearing. By the time the 1900s rolled around, he excelled at becoming a ghost. At disappearing. 

By the time he met Abigail, Henry was exhausted, not that he would ever admit that to himself. He had been 35 for 128 years and he had not let anyone in on his secret since Nora. He had been a doctor, a paramedic, a farmer, a butcher, an undertaker and countless other jobs in between. By the time he met Abigail, he had been so many people he wasn’t sure if there were any pieces of his original self left anymore. 

But Abigail was different. He knew that from the moment she first smiled at him. What he didn’t know was how she would change his life. Henry hadn’t been on a date in over a century until Abigail asked him to dance once night at a club. After that it was coffee and dinner and more dances, until they were seeing each other every night, and most days. Henry knew he was in trouble when he started rethinking his escape plans to make them for two and trying to think of ways he would be able to see her if someone started suspecting his secret. 

The day he realized he wanted to tell her his secret, he was terrified. He didn’t know what he would do if she shunned him like Nora had. However, after keeping his secret for 128 years, it was amazing to let it out and finally unburden himself to someone. And she understood - she didn’t leave him or shun him or try to commit him. She married him and adopted a baby with him, and they became a family. She understood that they had to have portable lives and soon she excelled at disappearing as well as he did. Abigail understood him until one day she didn’t. And on that day, with no warning, she was just gone. That was when Henry realized that maybe she didn’t actually understand him at all. He tried to look for her but he had taught her too well how to disappear and she had left no trace. 

He had eternity to over think what happened and how it all went wrong and why she left him. He never thought Abigail was a very vain woman, but maybe it was turning 50 while he still looked 35. Or maybe it was Abe graduating from college and shipping off to Vietnam, leaving the two of them alone for the first time in 22 years. She didn’t leave a note, so he was left to forever speculate on what happened. Another curse of being immortal. 

With Abe and Abigail gone, there was no reason to keep living the life they had all shared, so he disappeared. He always kept an eye out for her, and employed the tricks they had used all of the years they were together, but he never found her. He kept in touch with Abe, but once Abe came home from the war he knew that for Abe to have a real life, to meet a woman, get married, maybe have children of his own, Henry couldn’t be around. Abe needed to be able to live his life without having the shadow and the fear of Henry’s secret hanging over his head. 

It was during this solitary time, after Abigail left and when he was separated from Abe, that Henry started focusing on the one thing he could never have - death. He moved around Europe and didn't stay in any one place for more than a year, always vigilant and careful to never give anyone a chance to find out his secret. He updated his death journals more religiously and started doing more research. He became less careful about dying because he didn’t have Abigail or Abe around to protect anymore. It was a low point for his immortal existence but also the time where he learned the most about death and dying. 

One day, after Abe’s second divorce from Maureen, Abe showed up on his doorstep in Brussels and informed Henry that he was done letting Henry be alone. Abe explained he had tried the whole marriage thing and it hadn’t worked out, and while he wasn’t giving up on women, he didn’t need a long-term relationship to be happy. He needed his family and Henry was his family and that was that. From then on it was Henry and Abe. Abe never judged. He never made Henry feel guilty about uprooting them every few years. He never made Henry feel like his secret was something that he needed to be ashamed of. 

Abe's unconditional love constantly amazed Henry. Growing up with Henry’s secret was not an easy thing and more than once Abe had been hurt, confused, angry, or resentful when they had to move. Henry even knew the turning point for Abe - when he stopped resenting and started understanding. When Abe was 14, Abigail was almost killed because of Henry’s secret. A group of ex-soldiers recognized Henry and set fire to their house while Abigail was home. If Henry and Abe hadn’t come straight home from the rugby game they were attending, they would have lost her. After that, Abe never questioned their moves. Instead of resenting Henry for putting their lives in danger, he accepted his family and what they had to do to stay safe. For a while Abe became almost as suspicious as Henry. It was Abigail who soothed Abe when he had nightmares and it was Abigail who taught Abe how to love and open himself up to being loved. Henry did his best but it was Abigail's influence that allowed Abe to grow into a generally well-adjusted adult despite being raised by an immortal father. He knew this because she did the same thing for Henry. And then she left him.

With Abigail gone, Abe was all that mattered to Henry. The only thing in his life he could never leave behind and that he couldn’t live without. Henry knew one day he was going to have to accept the fact that Abe wasn’t immortal and Abe would leave him, but for all of Henry’s planning and ability to distance himself from the people in his life, life without Abe was just not something he was willing to contemplate.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to smittywing, reccea, wojelah and Liz for their wonderful beta work.


End file.
